The Jig is Up - Lavinia, Azorius Renegade [Primer]

Commander / EDH Control Primer WU (Azorius)

acedentprone

Acceleration (9)

• 1x Azorius Signet
• 1x Burnished Hart
• 1x Chromatic Lantern
• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Solemn Simulacrum

Board Wipes (4)

• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Dusk / Dawn
• 1x Supreme Verdict
• 1x Wrath of God

Break Parity (5)

• 1x Dream Halls
• 1x Karn, the Great Creator *f-pre*
• 1x Meekstone
• 1x Portcullis
• 1x Smothering Tithe

Card Draw (6)

• 1x Loyal Drake
• 1x Palace Jailer
• 1x Rhystic Study
• 1x Sphinx's Revelation
• 1x Tidings
• 1x Windfall

Card Selection (7)

• 1x Fact or Fiction
• 1x Narset, Parter of Veils
• 1x Ponder
• 1x Preordain
• 1x Search for Azcanta  ^Flip
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Weatherlight

Counterspells (5)

• 1x Cryptic Command
• 1x Delay
• 1x Dovin's Veto
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Mana Drain

Land - Utility (9)

• 1x Academy Ruins
• 1x Eiganjo Castle
• 1x Field of the Dead
• 1x Flagstones of Trokair
• 1x Inventors' Fair
• 1x Maze of Ith
• 1x Minamo, School at Water's Edge
• 1x Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
• 1x Reliquary Tower

Lands (25)

• 1x Adarkar Wastes
• 1x Ancient Den
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Darksteel Citadel
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Glacial Fortress
• 1x Hallowed Fountain
• 1x Irrigated Farmland
• 2x Island
• 1x Nimbus Maze
• 1x Path of Ancestry
• 2x Plains
• 1x Prairie Stream
• 1x Prismatic Vista
• 1x Sea of Clouds
• 1x Seachrome Coast
• 1x Seat of the Synod
• 2x Snow-Covered Island
• 2x Snow-Covered Plains
• 1x Temple of Enlightenment
• 1x Tundra

Lock Pieces (4)

• 1x Knowledge Pool
• 1x Omen Machine
• 1x Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
• 1x Teferi, Time Raveler

Protection (4)

• 1x Darksteel Plate
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Teferi's Protection

Targeted Removal (7)

• 1x Council's Judgment
• 1x Imprisoned in the Moon *f-pre*
• 1x Path to Exile
• 1x Release to the Wind
• 1x Return to Dust
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Unexpectedly Absent

Tutors (3)

• 1x Enlightened Tutor
• 1x Fabricate
• 1x Reshape

Utility Creatures (6)

• 1x Restoration Angel
• 1x Reveillark
• 1x Spell Queller
• 1x Sun Titan
• 1x Torrential Gearhulk
• 1x Venser, Shaper Savant

Win Conditions (outside of lock) (5)

• 1x Avacyn, Angel of Hope
• 1x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
• 1x Karn, Scion of Urza
• 1x Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
• 1x Venser, the Sojourner

Commander (1)

---

The Jig is Up

The News is Out
They've finally found me
The renegade, who had it made
Retrieved for a bounty

Renegade by Styx

This deck is an endless Work In Progress! Feedback, suggestions and upvotes are always appreciated.

Lavinia, former an Arrester for the Azorius Senate, is now on the run. Vraska assassinated the Supreme Judge Isperia. The Senate found it self with a new Guildmaster: the cruel and unethical Dovin Baan. She now hides from her own guild, seeking to overthrow Dovin and his insidious master.

Introduction

Lavinia, Azorius Renegade is control/lock deck. Control the game with powerful counterspells, board wipes, and targeted removal. Get ahead with strong card selection, card draw, and restricting opponents' more unfair plays with Lavinia.

Key Strengths

Why play Lavinia, Azorius Renegade over other commanders like Grand Arbiter Augustin IV ?

• Lavinia comes down almost always on Turn 2. Sometimes Turn 1.
• Similarly, the does not have high mana requirements. 78.5% of the nonland cards are CMC 4 or less.
• She attacks the game in a different way. Lavinia stops very specific strategies, and we can abuse that to our advantage.
• She seems like Stax. She is not. She actively does not want additional tax effects, since it encourages players to play out excess lands, or forcing them to pay mana. This negates both of her ability.
• Since she is not Stax, she does not garner as much hate, like GAAIV (who I will remove mercilessly and repeatedly). Games become less archenemy and more free-for-all. Which plays into her control game.
• It is good in 1v1 and multiplayer.
• The deck rebuilds quickly, Lavinia having a cheap CMC and in blue.
• She has no great counters. Her first ability is just a static "you can't" and it is difficult to play around her second ability if that is your game plan.

Key Weaknesses

Not everything is sunshine and happiness:

• There are some match ups where Lavinia does nothing. If your opponent is doing things fairly, then she does not have much impact.
• She is rather vulnerable. She has no inherent defensive abilities.
• Artifact dependent, both for acceleration and her lock. Effects like Energy Flux and Aura Shards are brutal.

"Power Level"

Following the Command Zone's guideline for Commander Deck power levels, this deck is an 8.

The deck lacks any way of winning on turn 4 or earlier. Similarly it does not play any mass land destruction or infinite combos.

Nevertheless Lavinia applies constant pressure in terms of what your opponents can and cannot do. It has a deep toolbox and very powerful cards such as Mana Drain , Force of Will , and Mana Crypt .

Power level explained Show

• Power lvl. 1-2: Janky decks. These are usually gimmicky game plans or very budget decks.
• Power lvl. 3-4: Casual decks. Usually pre-constructed decks fall under the category. They have a theme but not -everything is optimal towards your goal.
• Power lvl. 5-6: Focused decks. These decks have a clear focus and are lead by a decent general. But can be -inconsistent.
• Power lvl. 7-8: Optimized decks. Powerful generals and consistent decks that apply constant pressure on the board. Even without the use of tutors or land destruction.
• Power lvl. 9-10: Competitive decks. We're talking any disgusting way in order to win as fast as turn 4.

Why should you play Lavinia?

If you say yes to he following than Lavinia may be right for you.

• Do you like a deck centered around your Commander?
• Enjoy casting powerful spells?
• Want to attack the format in unique ways?
• Drawing Cards is fun?
• Do you like build advantage by layering synergies? (corporate buzzwords!)
• Need a flexible deck that can 1v1 as well as multiplayer?
• Do you like casting Cryptic Command ?
• Do you want a powerful but not necessarily tier 1 cEDH deck?
• Are you a fan of awesome 70s and 80s rock bands?

Why should you not play Lavinia?

If you say yes to he following than Lavinia maynot be right for you.

• Do you find sitting back and dictating the game boring?
• Are cards like Knowledge Pool unfun?
• Do you want to play top tier competitive?
• Want to attack with lots of creatures?
• Want infinite combos?
• Want to take extra turns?
• Do you hate Cryptic Command ?
• Are you a fan of mumble rap?

The Strategy

This is what makes Lavinia tick. The deckbuilding strategy employed is broken down into 4 pieces:

Acceleration

Lavinia does not have high mana requirements. The vast majority of the deck is less than 5 cmc. You do need to hit 6 mana, minimum, for some key pieces. Our two biggest win conditions are also 7 & 8 mana, but are not required until very late in the game.

• 34 lands in the deck. It is not a lot, but with the low cmc and heavy card draw you can get flooded easily.
• We have 2 Quest Lands. Azor's Gateway   and Search for Azcanta   they both are easily flippable while following our Card Selection game plan later on.
• We have 7 Mana Rocks. Getting ahead on mana is key to keeping counter magic useful and card draw powerful. The most important one is Chrome Mox since it allows for Lavinia to come down turn 1.

Control Elements

Lavinia naturally restricts opponents actions. Let's reinforce that by playing strong control pieces to keep the advantage in our favor until we assemble the lock and/or end it with our powerful win conditions.

We have effectively 9 counterspells. The 5 instants plus Venser, Shaper Savant , Spell Queller , Torrential Gearhulk , and Lavinia, Azorius Renegade herself. Further more Delay and Spell Queller are basically hard counters with Lavinia, because of her second ability.

We have a plethora of targeted removal. The usual suspects of white exile spells along with Return to Dust , Release to the Wind , Unexpectedly Absent and Imprisoned in the Moon to deal with problem permanents make an appearance. Release to the Wind is particularly interesting with Lavinia, it pulls double duty as a protection/blink effect for your permanents and while Lavinia is around completely removes an opponents.

Board wipes are rather sparse in this deck, because we have other methods of controlling creatures. Effectively Supreme Verdict is our only concrete wrath, so going with the uncounterable one made sense. Otherwise Dusk / Dawn removes anything big while leaving Lavinia around and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite does a good imitation of a board wipe while boosting our creatures.

So how do we deal with creatures? Same way we deal with other problems, (a)symmetrical effects that we get around. Portcullis is a brutally effective way of limiting the number of creatures. It is not uncommon to play Lavinia, one other creature, and effectively lock your opponents out of a board presence. Additionally, all Enter the Battlefield and Leave the Battlefield abilities still trigger, leading to fun interactions with Spell Queller , Sun Titan , and Venser, Shaper Savant . Additionally Vehicles are not creatures until they are crewed. So they never trigger Portcullis giving you a bigger board presence than what appears at a glance. Meekstone is basically a back up Portcullis but for only big things. Most of the deck's creatures are either less than 3 power or have Vigilance. Vehicles are never creatures during the untap step so are unaffected by Meekstone .

Additionally: We play Dream Halls (with Livinia, we are the only one with free spells), and our lock pieces. Also there's the good old Smothering Tithe plus Standstill shenanigans.

Karn, the Great Creator is great against any artifact heavy deck. Shutting off all activated abilities (including mana abilities) rendering their mana acceleration useless while not affecting our own. It has a lock synergy with Mycosynth Lattice for that reason. The Commander Rules Committee has recently refined Rule 13 eliminating the "without prior agreement on their scope from the playgroup" clause nerfing Karn's -2 ability from obtaining the Lattice from outside the game. The draw backs from playing Lattice mainboard are not worth including it. I will still have one available if there is a group that inherently plays with a sideboard (new Rule 0, "Local groups are welcome to modify the Commander Rules as they see fit. If you’d like an exception to these rules, especially in an unfamiliar environment, please get the approval of the other players before the game begins."). Karn still lets me recover Omen Machine or Knowledge Pool if they are exiled while also turning them into beaters to end the game quicker once the lock is secured.

Card Draw/Selection

The key for any control deck to function is strong and efficient card draw and card selection. Here's how we accomplish that:

Card Selection is more important for control than pure draw. Having the right tools matter. Cantrips like Ponder and Brainstorm filter 3 deep, while either providing a shuffle for ridding ourselves of dead cards or removing them from our hand with an external shuffle. Then there are looting, surveiling (in a way), and poisoned pills (best of the bad for an opponent). Cards like Azor's Gateway  , Smuggler's Copter , Weatherlight , Search for Azcanta  , Fact or Fiction , and Karn, Scion of Urza all fit this.

Card Draw. Sometimes you just need more cards. Loyal Drake and Palace Jailer do great Phyrexian Arena imitations. Rhystic Study is reliable card draw or ties up your opponents' mana. Sphinx's Revelation , Tamiyo, the Moon Sage and Tidings just are a flood of fresh cards.

Why get new cards when you can reuse the ones you have. Recursion and Blink effectively doubles the use of certain cards. Sun Titan , Hanna, Ship's Navigator , and Torrential Gearhulk all double dip on previously used cards. Venser, the Sojourner , Venser, Shaper Savant , and Release to the Winds all double up the use of great Enter the Battlefield or Leave the Battlefield Effects.

Lock and Win

Alright, so we've limited our opponent's options while keeping our open. How do we win?


First, we lock them out.
Lavinia, Azorius Renegade + Omen Machine or Knowledge Pool + Lavinia, Azorius Renegade are our primary ways. Omen Machine stops everyone from drawing cards. Period. In exchange everyone gets to play the top card of their library for free each turn. OR Knowledge Pool eats the top 3 cards of each player's library and whenever a player tries to cast something they exchange it for another spell eaten by the pool and cast that for free instead. Key point: Lavinia your opponents counters free spells.

Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir can also substitute for Lavinia if she otherwise unavailable. Furthermore he fully locks the board in case your opponents spells are uncounterable le gasp. Since spells cast with either the Machine or Pool are not at sorcery speed, and Teferi prevents that. Omen Machine + Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir or Knowledge Pool + Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir is just as good.

Teferi, Time Raveler has a passive ability that does the same thing for the lock as creature Teferi, so it fills all the same roles.

What is Sorcery Speed Show

307.5. If a spell, ability, or effect states that a player can do something only "any time they could cast a sorcery," it means only that the player must have priority, it must be during the main phase of their turn, and the stack must be empty. The player doesn't need to have a sorcery they could cast. Effects that would preclude that player from casting a spell or casting a sorcery don't affect the player's capability to perform that action (unless the action is actually casting a spell or casting a sorcery).

Second, to help end the game (particularly after assembling a lock) we employ some high impact creatures or powerful planeswalkers. Avacyn, Angel of Hope and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite are just huge and rapidly accelerate the end while bolstering our stuff. Tamiyo, the Moon Sage and Venser, the Sojourner both have backbreaking emblems. Karn, Scion of Urza 's -2 ability makes a dude, but that dude gets really large with the number of artifacts we run, and he can do it repeatedly while gaining us card advantage.

Notable Exclusions

There are certain things I did not want to include, but some are subject to change.

• I will never include Mass Land Destruction. While this strategy is extremely effective with Lavinia (effectively making her first ability backbreaking), I find it supremely unfun, uncreative, and undeserving of being in my decks.
• I will never include Expropriate or Cyclonic Rift . I generally don't like extra turn effects. The game is built to include multiple players, and is very unfun if only one person gets to play. Rift is a mistake of a card. Similar to Mass Land Destruction it is unfun and uncreative, but they act similarly. They are cast in 1 of two situations: because you can, which leads to a tedious number of turns rebuilding, and slowing the game to a crawl; or because you will end the game basically immediately. I am not a fan of "one card - end the game strategies" looking at you Craterhoof Behemoth . Be more creative with your win conditions
• I *currently do not play targeted land destruction. While I find Mass Land Destruction unfun, targeted land destruction has it's place. There are problematic lands like Dark Depths , The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale , Cabal Coffers , Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx , Rogue's Passage , Cavern of Souls , and the Quest Lands that occasionally need dealing with. If they become more prevalent in my meta, I may start to include Strip Mine , Wasteland , Ghost Quarter , and/or Field of Ruin .

Footnotes

Potential Changes

+ Dovin's Veto
+ Austere Command
Austere Command is an incredibly flexible board wipe. Capable of leaving my creatures alive and/or dealing with artifacts and enchantments. I haven't let needed it, but if I get run over more or I start running into Privileged Position / Greater Auramancy it may find its way in.
Dovin's Veto is an uncounterable negate. If non-creature combo becomes more of an issue I will find room for it.

Local Meta

My local meta, which influences my deck building choices:

Najeela, the Blade-Blossom - Mostly warrior tribal, but moving towards more cut throat. It is the primary source of creature beat down. Its fast, and hard hitting, and can likely combo out with cards like Druids' Repository or Derevi, Empyrial Tactician . Portcullis handles this nicely.

Gishath, Sun's Avatar - the only deck that really cheats creatures in. And only one with creatures of any real size. Fortunately dinosaurs are pretty linear, are fairly non-disruptive with their abilities, and are just big. Meekstone was added almost exclusively to combat this kind of deck (and because I have very few creatures affected by it, most are less than 3 power or vigilance).

Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign - This is the biggest factor. All this deck wants to do is broken things for free. Time Walk effects (particularly Expropriate ), Sunder and all around cards that are just mean (intentionally so). Lavinia, Azorius Renegadede was built almost exclusively to counteract this play style, and cards like Teferi's Protection and Unexpectedly Absent were included just to mess with this strategy. A Capture of Jingzhou was recently added, upping the overall time walk effects to 6. Seriously considering adding an Ugin's Nexus but the card is so narrow without ways to sacrifice it.

Recent Changes

I've added a ton of utility lands: Inventors' Fair , Minamo, School at Water's Edge , Flagstones of Trokair , Oboro, Palace in the Clouds , and Academy Ruins . I also included all 3 artifact lands. It means that Weatherlight has a very consistent chance of hitting everytime you attack. Which makes it a draw engine under Omen Machine
Since my basic count went from 20 to 12. I cut Back to Basics . Windfall took it's place as extra card draw.
I obtained a Tundra and Seachrome Coast so basics are now at 10 count. At the prerelease I opened a Karn, the Great Creator and obtained a foil Teferi, Time Raveler . So good bye Weathered Wayfarer and Smuggler's Copter .

Date added	5 years
Last updated	5 years
Key combos	Knowledge Pool + Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir Knowledge Pool + Lavinia, Azorius Renegade Lavinia, Azorius Renegade + Omen Machine
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	15 - 0 Mythic Rares 52 - 0 Rares 16 - 0 Uncommons 9 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.29
Tokens	Construct 0/0 C, Emblem Tamiyo, the Moon Sage, Emblem Venser, the Sojourner, Monarch Emblem, Treasure, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	References, Deck Ideas, Commander, uwu, Azorius Decks